Framing (Social Sciences)

In the social sciences, framing is a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives describing how individuals, groups and societies organize, perceive and communicate about reality. Framing can occur in a person's own thought, as the mental representations, interpretations and simplifications through which reality is understood, or in interpersonal communication, as the sharing of those frames between different people; framing is treated as a key component of sociology and as an integral part of how people convey and process information every day, since successful framing techniques can reduce the ambiguity of an intangible topic by placing new information in a context recipients can already connect to what they know. In social theory, framing is described as a schema of interpretation, a collection of anecdotes and stereotypes that people rely on to understand and respond to events, built up as a series of mental filters shaped by biological and cultural influence, filters through which people then make sense of the world and which in turn shape the choices they go on to make.